by PJ Haarsma
At first the water felt warm, but a prickly sensation crept along my skin and then I began to feel the cold. A deep cold. Not as if the temperature changed, not as if I needed to bundle up, but rather a feeling that started in my veins and worked its way to my heart. Something was sucking the heat from inside my body, pulling it out of me, and devouring me. I could do nothing. I tried to swim but I didn’t know how.
I opened my eyes, searching for help, only to see the monster’s murky shadow bear down on me. Its thick, tapered tail thrust the green liquid. Two broad front flippers that ended with clawed fingers rested over its huge belly.
I sensed the world slipping away. I remembered when Madame Lee’s evil programs ripped my essence from my body, leaving me to die inside the central computer. You’re dying now, I thought. Could it be happening again?
Instead of hitting the ground, I landed on the tough, crusty skin of Toll. It was hard as concrete and rougher than anything I knew. The force of the water pinned me against Toll’s forehead, and the Samiran rushed to break the surface.
The silence of underwater gave way to shrieks and screaming as Toll tossed me onto the platform. Hands grabbed at me, pulling at my arms and legs. I was so cold. I tried to suck oxygen into my lungs, but my throat froze shut.
“You imbecile!” I heard someone shout. I think it was Charlie.
“How could I know humans were so weak,” I heard Odran say.
“Johnny! JT!” I heard my friends somewhere in the frozen darkness as I felt my body being bundled up and hoisted off the ground. The cold finally reached my brain and shut the lights out.
“Do you have any idea the risk you have taken?” someone said, right next to me but a mile away in my head.
“What are you implying?” someone else said — someone who sounded nervous.
“I refuse to do this dance. Tell him.”
Was that Charlie?
“May I remind you whom you are speaking to?”
“May I remind you whom you will deal with if this boy dies?”
“He is nothing more than a child. A human child who is here to work,” a new voice said.
“You could have the Scion right under your noses and you wouldn’t even know it.”
“Scion! Now I know you are foolish.” Who said that?
“I will not stand here and debate the prophecy of the Ancients with him.”
Another voice spoke up and then another. I was cold. Very, very cold.
“The Trust will receive my report at the next gathering.”
“We have done nothing against the Trust. The central computer will provide evidence of this.”
“You better pray to whatever it is you pray to and hope that boy lives.”
Darkness came as the cold took me once more.
“You’re starting to make a habit of this,” Max said.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. My fingers were wrapped in a yellowed plastic that stank of decay.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Our new rec room,” she replied.
“You’re awake! Welcome back,” Theodore said, leaning next to Max. “Not bad, huh?”
Theodore turned his palm up to the tall, slender windows that started at the floor and curved up and over my head. I could see the stars in the sky and even the other side of the ring when I looked out. The brilliant moon, Ki, floated across the windows. It felt like I was on the observation deck of the Renaissance. All the windows in the oval room converged on a massive pink crystal that hung down from the center of the ceiling and illuminated the entire room.
Theodore saw me staring down the row of sleepers that lined the windows. “Twenty brand new ones,” he said. I lay in the one second from the end.
“Compliments of the Keepers,” Max said.
“Yeah, Odran wanted us to share a couple of blankets and a pot,” Theodore said.
“Theylor made him order the sleepers. He wasn’t too happy about it,” Max added. “I’m at the other end with Grace and Ketheria.”
“Where is Ketheria?” I asked.
“She’s saying good-bye to Charlie,” Theodore said. “He sat with you every cycle, but he had to leave. He said he had things to do.”
“He’ll be back, though,” Max added.
“Has anyone heard anything about Weegin?” I said.
“Nothing,” Theodore said.
I looked around my new home. “How long have I been like this?”
“Over a phase,” Max said.
“A phase?”
“You almost died, JT,” Theodore whispered.
“Again,” Max said teasingly.
“How?”
“That’s the best part,” Max said, sitting up.
“The bio-bots tried to suck the life out of you,” Theodore said, interrupting Max.
“May I?” Max said to Theodore.
“Sorry.”
“You know Toll, the Samiran?” she said. There was an eagerness to her voice.
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“Well, the water is treated with bio-bots. Really, really tiny things that help keep the Samirans cool. They’re just so big and with the crystals, well, it just creates too much heat for them. So the bio-bots consume the heat and then . . . you know . . . they make that sweet smell.”
“They fart,” Theodore said.
“Do you have to say that?” Max frowned. “They’re engineering marvels. Engineering marvels don’t fart.”
“Well, that’s where the smell comes from. Ask Charlie,” Theodore argued.
“Why don’t they just use those bio-bots to cool the crystals?” I asked.
“They only work with life-forms. That’s why they went after you, but you’re so small . . .” Max stopped. “Well, not small. I mean small compared to Toll. That’s why you almost died. It was very easy for them to drain the heat from your body.”
“You almost froze to death,” Theodore said.
“But Toll saved you,” Max added.
“He did?”
“Yeah. He jumped right up onto the edge,” Theodore exclaimed, his eyes widening. “He has hands, like ours, on the end of his . . . the end of . . .”
“Fins. I think they are called fins,” Max informed Theodore.
“I guess I should thank him, then,” I said.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity,” Max said.
“Why?”
“We live here now,” Theodore said.
“With Odran?”
“Yep, all of us now belong to the Samiran Caretaker,” Max said.
I was awake but hardly ready to begin exploring my new home. My toes and fingers, even my joints, hurt if I put the slightest pressure on them. I lay on my sleeper remembering the things I had heard while I was recovering — little pieces of conversations, unfamiliar voices, and I think I even heard Toll. But I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream. There seemed to be a lot of upset people running around, and I didn’t know why. What did it have to do with me? Nothing, I told myself. I was a knudnik.
I woke up one spoke finally feeling rested. Almost overrested, in fact. It was time to find out what was going on. I swung my feet around and sat on the edge of my sleeper. The room seemed to spin a little as I adjusted to being up for the first time in a long time. While I stared across the room, waiting for it to settle in one place, I compared it to Weegin’s World. My new home may have looked different, but I still felt the same way about it. Like an outsider. Like I was just looking in. What would my mom and dad tell me right now if I told them how I felt? Would they be sitting next to me telling me not to worry, that everything was going to be all right? I saw that in an entertainment file once. I wondered what that felt like.
“Feeling better?” Max asked as she entered the room with a cup of water and a bowl with some sort of burnt-looking mud in it.
“Pretty good, I think,” I said. “What’s that?”
“Breakfast,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “You’ll get used to it.”
I stuck my f
inger in and tasted it. “That’ll take a while. What is it? It looks like the snotty liquid in Odran’s tank.”
“Odran wants us on a high-protein, high-vitamin diet. He wants to keep his new stock in top working form,” she said, trying to mimic Odran’s gurgling voice.
“It tastes like paper.”
“Some of the kids stole some sweetener from Odran, and they use that to kill the taste.”
“They stole it?”
Max just shrugged.
“So we’re stealing now,” I said.
Max sat down next to me. “We have no choice. I don’t think Odran likes the idea of having us around, anyway.”
“I got that impression already.”
“He hardly ever talks to us, and if he does, he only asks if you’re awake.”
“They fix the tank?”
“Almost. They brought in a lot of equipment to do it. A lot of computers, too.”
I thought of Madame Lee and all the computers she had used to mess with the central computer. “Why would he need computers? The central computer can handle everything. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing makes sense anymore,” she said.
I looked at Max. “What am I doing here?” I whispered. “What does the Universe have planned for us?”
“Do you want to know what I think?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” she said. “I mean I don’t think any of us are supposed to be here.”
I chuckled.
“Are you going to laugh? Because if you are . . .”
“No, I’m sorry. I really want to hear.”
“Well, sometimes I feel like Mother got things mixed up and we landed at the wrong place.”
“There’s only one Orbis, Max,” I said.
“I know. But think about it. We know the Renaissance was attacked before we were even born. Madame Lee admitted to that. Who says your father . . .”
I frowned when Max mentioned my father. She knew I didn’t believe Madame Lee.
“OK, who says she didn’t mess things up or change something so we wound up on Orbis instead of where we were supposed to go? I know it’s wishful thinking, but I just don’t understand why my parents would leave Earth to be a slave. Did they not think we would be forced to do the same?”
I didn’t say anything. I just sat listening. I’d asked myself these questions many times.
“It makes me cry at night sometimes, you know, thinking about all of this,” Max continued. “Hoping that it’s just some bad dream. But then I think about Ketheria and I think about Theodore and Charlie . . . and you. If we were someplace else, we may not all be together, and you know what? That makes me even sadder. So if I have to do some dumb chores for a few rotations, so what? We’re smarter than them, JT. Let’s just do what they want and be gone. All right?”
I smiled at Max.
“Besides, look at you now,” she said. You have an important job, JT. Charlie says it’s really golden that you’re going to be able help the Keepers. Odran has had too much control for too long. They never had to worry when Space Jumpers were working with the Samirans. You should be happy.”
“Somehow I just pictured it differently,” I said, and looked down at the brown glop. “Max, you ever heard of the Samirans having bad hearing?”
“I never heard of Samirans until a phase ago.”
“Have you ever heard or uplinked anything about something called a Scion — something to do with the Ancients?”
She shook her head. “Never. Why?”
“Nothing. I was just dreaming. Forget it,” I said, and set the bowl aside. The food was awful. I needed to get some of that sweetener from the other kids.
By the next cycle, I was able to stand on my own, and I set out to explore my new home. Construction robots still zipped about as I scaled the mountainous stone steps to the top of the tank. The tank had been refilled, but there was no sign of Toll. I sat near the edge, where the aroma was strong, and looked out over the water. The sugary smell didn’t seem as sweet now that I knew those little bio-bots were farting up a storm in there.
I have to admit that I was a little excited to have my own job on Orbis. Did I get a title? The Samiran Caretaker’s Assistant didn’t have a very good ring to it. But wasn’t I the Caretaker now? I mean if I could talk to Toll, then why did they need Odran? Maybe that was why Odran didn’t want me around. Max was right, though — just three more rotations and then I could apply for Citizenship. Both Theylor and Charlie mentioned how important this job was. I had to do well. This was my chance to prove myself. Looking out over the tank, I decided to do the best job possible, no matter what Odran thought of me.
Without warning, something surfaced right before my eyes. No more than two meters away was a Samiran. It wasn’t Toll. This one was smaller and a little lighter in color — more of a gray-blue. It lifted its head out of the water just far enough so it could speak.
“Are you Johnny Turnbull?” it said in long, drawn-out vowels. My head throbbed with each word the Samiran spoke, and I stood up.
“I am. Who are you?” I said, hoping I was speaking loud enough.
“I am Smool. Mate of Toll,” she said.
“Nice to meet you!” I shouted.
“No, it is far nicer to meet you,” she said. “It has been a very long time since we have communicated with anyone on Orbis. You should be very proud. Your name will be added to a list of very honorable people.”
I squeezed my temples with the palm of my hands.
“You’ll get used to that,” Smool said. “Your small brain will adjust over time.”
“Is that why Toll is so mad? Because he can’t talk with anyone here?”
“That is for him to communicate. But would you permit me to ask you a question?”
“Of course!”
“Why are you shouting?”
“So you can hear me,” I said, lowering my voice. “I was told Samirans could not hear very well.”
“A Samiran can hear the purr of Linkian two hundred kilometers away. I am afraid you were misguided,” she informed me.
A long, deep vibration rippled through the water. It did not translate. I held my hands to my ears.
“I must leave,” the Samiran said. “Toll would enjoy a conversation with you at the start of this spoke, next cycle.”
“That’s my job now,” I said.
“Are you the Caretaker now?”
“Well . . . no, I don’t think so. I mean Odran’s still here. I guess I’m like a helper — but an important helper,” I said.
Smool sank back into the water, swirling hundreds and hundreds of liters of murky green water in her wake. Important helper? I’m such a malf.
I watched Smool swim to the horizon. Why did Odran tell me they couldn’t hear very well? Smool could hear perfectly. Did he want me to go in the water? Did he want me to freeze to death?
I turned toward the light chute and ran smack into Odran’s tank.
“You are to inform me every time you speak with the Samirans,” he said. Odran glared at me as if he was searching for something.
“Of course,” I replied.
“What did the female want?”
“She said Toll wants to talk with me this spoke, next cycle.”
“Don’t be impressed. I will alert the Council. It is them he wants to speak to,” he said, and turned his glider away.
“Odran, why did you tell me they couldn’t hear — the Samirans, I mean?”
Odran turned back. “I never said that.”
“Yes, you did. When —”
It happened very fast. Odran hit me with some sort of prod: a metal device that sent a shock wave through my body, knocking me to my knees. I clamped my hands around my jaw, not to keep from screaming but to prevent my teeth from falling out of my head.
“Think twice before you call me a liar, knudnik,” was all he said.
By the next cycle, six members of the Trading Council ha
d arrived at Odran’s along with Drapling and Theylor.
“Pretty impressive,” Max whispered.
“What is?” I said.
“They’re all here because of you,” she replied.
“Yeah, you’re gonna be pretty important around here,” Theodore added.
I was more worried about my teeth than what was going on around the tank. Ever since my incident with Odran, I’d been convinced my back molars were loose. I kept checking and rechecking to see if they were staying put.
“What are you doing?” Max said, catching me with my fingers in my mouth.
“Nothing.”
Another group of aliens shuffled about in long red-and-white silk robes, following the Keepers. They crept along with their feet bound together and their arms extended out from their sides as they entered the tank area.
“Nagools,” Ketheria said, pointing to the aliens.
We sat and watched from a room off the top of the great stairway.
“Nagools?” Theodore asked.
“They study OIO. We saw them before on Orbis 1, in the Trading Hall,” Max said.
“OIO?” I said.
“The art and science of cosmic energy,” Ketheria said matter-of-factly.
“Oh.” I looked at Theodore and raised my eyebrows. Theodore shrugged.
“Didn’t you see the markings?” Max said, and pointed to the circular shapes painted on the ashen face of one Nagool.
“Odran has the same one on his temple,” Ketheria said.
“I can’t look at that guy for long without feeling weird,” Theodore said.
“He’s a believer,” Ketheria said as she continued watching the procession of aliens.
Meanwhile, the Trading Council members had grown rest less, walking in circles and only stopping to shout at each other. Two council members had sent their holograms, which floated above a portable seating area attached to the platform. They, too, bickered, but the Nagools ignored all of it. I could see the water rumbling on the horizon, so I stood up and said good-bye to my friends. Toll would be at the platform soon.
“Where is the Softwire?” Drapling called out. “It is time.”
“I’m here,” I replied.
I stepped onto the platform. Everyone in attendance was staring at me, but I didn’t mind. They needed me, and that felt kind of good. I looked at the group; there was no sign of Charlie.